Utzon Center – Architecture that Sets Sails
Jørn Utzon is famous for the Sydney Opera House that billows like sails in the harbor. But there’s another building that perhaps was closer to Utzon’s heart. Utzon Center was the last building that he designed in the city where he grew up on the northern tip of Jutland. And just as the opera in Sydney, the building in Aalborg is also inspired by the sailing ships that used to fill the harbor on the Limfjord. Utzon Center was completed in 20018 together with Utzon’s son Kim Utzon and houses temporary exhibitions on design and architecture and the Utzon Archives.
Vandkunsten gives us Better Lives
Let’s live smaller-scale, better lives. Let’s share more. Invite nature in. Let’s take charge, together. Leave things alone and see the beauty. Does it sound like the credo of our times? Yes but the fact is that it is our times that finally have caught up with Danish visionary architects behind Vandkunsten Architects, who call themselves a studio for drawing and work under a name that means “water art” or “water feature” such as a fountain. In fact those are the principles that Vandkunsten has been using since the 1970’s. At Utzon Center in Aalborg, Denmark, a major exhibition explores Vandkunsten and the Danish interiors magazine Bo Bedre (Better Lives) and their influence on Danish architecture and interiors since the 1970’s.
SmartStamp Provides Smart Tech for the Art Sector
Swiss tech newcomer SmartStamp sets an impressive new standard in authentication and brand protection for the art world. With technology that is as easy as taking a picture with a mobile, it delivers contactless authentication and ID for artworks — providing security for all stakeholders in the art and collectibles market. It is available as an App and API for both retail and enterprise users. With their state-of-the-art technology, protecting artworks for eternity is as simple as taking a picture.
SmartStamp uses computer vision and AI, secured with eco-friendly blockchain timestamping technology, to create immutable, digital fingerprints of objects of art in order to verify their authenticity. Founded by the prominent art collector and serial entrepreneur Friedrich Kisters and the former New York museum curator and collections specialist Juli Cho Bailer, SmartStamp’s highly experienced team combines over 75 years of experience in fine art management and a team of world-class developers.
SmartStamp was developed specifically for the international art market using blockchain and patented identification and traceability technologies that were developed over 10 years with the cooperation of two German universities for use in the multi-trillion industrial supply chain and the $2 trillion art and collectibles asset class.
Join the discussion about Art & Society
How do we create, collaborate and understand our future inspired by artists? Teaming up with French Art 4 Collaborative Futures we invited art lovers, artists and art professionals to a virtual September Salon on September 22 on Art & Society. We had the pleasure to be joined by the artists Mille Kalsmose, Jakob Fenger from the Danish artist group SUPERFLEX and Curator Alex Fisher. Now both the digital September Salon is available on Youtube.
Glowing in the Dark
Designer Sabine Marcelis is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and works with pure forms and highlights materia through her work with installation and spatial design.
The suspended cylinder bars of light inside a colored resin case give a warm gentle glow for the autumn dark. Sabine Marcelis' aesthetic is following the function of the selected materials creating a visual effect and a glow in the dark that will last through winter.
The Insider Editorial No. 2 October 2020
Collected Memory & a Copenhagen Urban Park Mille Kalsmose & SUPERFLEX
How do we create, collaborate and understand our future inspired by artists? Teaming up with French Art 4 Collaborative Futures we invited art lovers, artists and art professionals to a virtual September Salon on September 22 on Art & Society. We had the pleasure to be joined by the artists Mille Kalsmose, Jakob Fenger from the Danish artist group SUPERFLEX and Curator Alex Fisher. Now both the digital September Salon and the Summer Salon are available on Youtube.
From the Earth with Love of Old and New
The long tradition of working both experimentally and traditional with ceramics comes together in Denmark’s CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art a couple of hours from Copenhagen. As it grew out of its old dowager house, a contemporary extension, mostly underground to preserve the historic site, opened in 2015, by Kjaer & Richter collaborating with architect Niels Frithiof Truelsen, landscape by Wad and Henry Jensen A/S engineers. The results are an additional 1 500 m2 space for the museum and unobstructed views of the Lillebaelt sound from the sculpture park where a smaller glass and tile clad pavilion surfaces, snuck into the sloping ground, its façade partly made of artisanal tiles from Petersen Tegl.
The museum was originally founded by a group of ceramicists and is located in an area with a rich history in ceramics and brickwork. Less known than the famous Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, CLAY Museum offers a fresh take on how to experience contemporary creativity and heritage, with architecture and landscaping that merge function harmoniously with nature and a historic site.
A bout du souffle with Kimsooja
Art that lets us in, opens space for our inner self, our thoughts and reflections and turn our gaze inwards. In the sculpture park Wanås Konst in Sweden, Kimsooja’s immersive installation To Breathe in the massive Hay Barn from the early 18th century makes us see by using empty space. We wander out on a mirrored surface that reflects our surroundings, dazzling and dizzying at first, listen to a soundtrack of the artist breathing and humming and find a painting made from scraps of textile stuffed into an ancient wall marked by time.
Mr. FLOWERheadZ and the Four Elements
Artist Hugh Findletar came across glass blowing on a trip to Kenya many years ago. Fascinated by the craft he eventually ended up working with a Master at a furnace in Murano, one of the islands in the lagoon of Venice. The craft of glass blowing uses the four ancient elements, fire, earth, water and air to create transparent and jewel like objects capturing the light and imagination.
Known as Mr. FLOWERheadZ, Findletar’s unique vases are favorites of Italian fashionistas. His beautiful and humorous vases, called FLOWERheadZ, are portraits of family and friends. Buying one entails the pleasant task of filling them with flowers just as the artists does. Currently his work is featured in Nomad Palais Bulles in partnership with Phillips Auction by The Spaceless Gallery.
September Salon Live from Copenhagen
September Salon 22/9 3pm CET by ART 4 COLLABORATIVE FUTURES
Please join us for a conversation about art & society. We have the pleasure to be joined by the artists Mille Kalsmose from her current exhibition Collected Memory and Jakob Fenger from SUPERFLEX, an artist group, known for Superkilen, an urban park project in Nørrebro in Copenhagen. Curator Alex Fisher will be joining us from the sculpture park Wanås Konst and pioneering artist Poul Gernes’ Pyramide, a radical Danish artist only working with art in social situations.
FLOWERheadZ for Fall
Bring a fantasy garden inside this fall, a job easily done with Hugh Findletar’s, a.k.a. Mr. FLOWERheadZ, vases and glass objects. The vases, the FLOWERheadZ, are just as beautiful with or without flowers and will bring joy to every day. Findletar works with the best craftsmen in the traditional glass furnaces of Murano. Each vase is unique, a portrait of a friend or source of inspiration for the artist.
A favorite of Italian fashionistas, Findletar has done collaborations with Pomellato and Boyy, as well as showing in Parisian couture fleurist Stéphane Chapelle’s in Paris. Lucky collectors in Scandinavia can find his one off pieces such as the FLOWERheadZ in the hip Copenhagen concept store Holly Golightly.
Summer Salons X Art 4 Collaborative Futures
Summer Salons X Art 4 Collaborative Futures.
How do we create, collaborate and understand our future inspired by artists?
Teaming up with French Art 4 Collaborative Futures we invited art lovers, artists and art professionals to a virtual Summer Salon on July 7 on Memory, Legacy, Collaborations, to learn more about how artists and art professional support and self-organise the art scene. The discussion took us to Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia in the brilliant company of Irena Popiashvili, Alex Fisher, artists Nino Kvrivishvili and Vladimir Miladinović.
Copenhagen by an Insider
No one can be a better guide for an art lover than the chic, fun and erudite art advisor Julie Quottrup Silbermann. With a long career in the international art world and experiences from the top art fairs, she's now found at COLLABORATIONS by Tania & Thomas Asbæk and on @juliesilbermann.
Insider Trip to Palma, September 17 – 20, 2020.
Please note that we have postponed the trip due to travel restriction in some countries. New dates to be announced fall 2020.
Join us for an invitation only experience of Palma, Mallorca, with VIP access to contemporary art galleries, artists, museum, foundations and collections.
The Game Is On With FOS
Julie Quottrup Silbermann’s Insider tip # No 1.
FOS is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the intersection between architecture, design and art. He is known for creating works that reach out into our society and everyday life - so who else, than FOS could create a colorful artistic petanque court in Kunsthal Charlottenborg in front of Apollo Bar.
Collaborations is the Copenhagen Way
Copenhagen Insider Julie Quottrup Silbermann’s tip # 4:
Collaborations by Tania & Thomas Asbaek is an art consultancy with a contemporary art space working with both galleries, artists and of course good friends. Through out the years they have established international collaborations and curated shows in the space with well-established and young emerging artists - all with the passion and wish to communicate art in a broader sense. During August they show New-York based artist Alissa McKendrick
Underground With Tomás Saraceno
Copenhagen Insider Julie Quottrup Silbermann’s tip # 5:
In Frederiksberg Garden underground await a magical journey and spectacular project by Argentina artist Tomás Saraceno can be seen. Once a water reservoir and now a space for contemporary art. Saraceno’s spectacular exhibition can only be experienced by boat, that you row on your own
From Vienna to Visseltofta
The countryside is the place to be. Inspired by the legendary Black Mountain College, Johan Ahlkvist, Hedda Bauer and Charlotta Öberg work together on an old dairy farm in Visseltofta , Sweden.
Outdoors & Immersive with Kimsooja
This is the summer art lovers took to the great outdoors. And is there a better place to experience contemporary art? At the sculpture park Wanås Konst in Sweden, Kimsooja’s solo exhibition Sowing Into Painting, makes you follow flax, used in the painter’s canvas and paint, on a journey through textile craft on different continents, a planted flax field that bloomed, ripened and is harvested, to the Laundry Field of 100 vintage, white, decorated bed sheets strung up between the majestic beech trees in the sculpture park.
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